Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov was born in Mymrino, a farming village in Oryol Oblast, on 26 June 1944. The son and grandson of schoolteachers, he followed in their footsteps. His father fought at the Soviet-German front of WWII and returned home with serious injuries. After graduating from a secondary school, his first job was working there for one year as a physics teacher in 1961.[1][2]

In 1962, Gennady enrolled into the Department of Physics and Mathematics of the Oryol Pedagogical Institute.